REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE AUSTRALIAN MEMORIAL TO THE FAMINE
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE AUSTRALIAN MEMORIAL TO THE FAMINE, HYDE PARK BARRACKS
A chairde. Is mór an pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh inniu.
Four and a half years ago, I stood on this hallowed ground and had the profound personal honour of inaugurating the Australian Memorial to the Great Irish Famine. On that occasion, I symbolically removed a stone from the outer wall, thereby setting in motion the labour of love, creative genius and sheer hard work, which culminated in this truly unique, austere and evocative memorial.
I return today to see for myself the realisation of that work.
It is a tribute to the artists who designed this memorial that in following in the path of the sculpture, we can today still experience an uncanny echo of the harrowing journey of Ireland’s victims of the Great Famine, as they left forever their ruined land.
The Memorial conveys to us the stark silent table on which no plate would ever again be filled, the broken families who turned their backs on it and Ireland forever, the poisoned fields they would never again till, symbolised by their abandoned spades and the eternally rotting potatoes. As they left the blighted fields of their birthplace, they had only one certainty - that life, as they had known it, had ceased and ahead lay only uncertainty and exile, grief and loneliness. From these grim things they would have to forge new hope, new lives.
The sculpture takes us through that period of dislocation, through the blank barracks wall which held no clue to what the future held. And then suddenly we are with our apprehensive ancestors on the far side of that mute wall and the same stark table is transposed, holding the tentative hope that in this new continent there could be filled plates, full stomachs and maybe a new beginning.
For me, the most evocative element of the Memorial is the glass panel dividing the old life from the new, a panel which poignantly lists the names of some of thousands of orphaned Irish girls who arrived in Sydney and found themselves within these very walls. Who can imagine what they thought or felt? Did they ever imagine that we would never forget?
This sacred Memorial is how we remember them and in remembering we acknowledge our debt to them and to all the men, women and children who came with nothing and built this great Democracy under the Southern Cross. Out of their courage, guts and gumption was distilled the spirit of Australia and as the proverb says ‘let those who drink the water remember with gratitude those who dug the well’.
I pay tribute today to all of you who are the Guardians of our shared history, the keepers of the sacred memory so respected in this place:
To the Government of New South Wales, the City of Sydney and the Land Titles Office;
To Jill Wran, on behalf of the New South Wales Historic Houses Trust;
To Angela and Hossein Valamanesh, the artists who designed this Monument;
To all those who contributed to the cost and the community which supported this dream;
And last, because you will never be forgotten, to Tom Power, and the Committee of the Great Irish Famine Commemoration whose loving commitment and belief inspired and brought this Memorial into being.
We are a blessed and privileged generation, born to full tables and to opportunity on our doorsteps. We drink the water and today we gather in humble gratitude to those born in harder times who dug these, our wells of plenty.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.